make the very life of the soul, because they are inspired by the
Spirit of God, even the Holy Ghost. And we shall be but too likely
not to sit in heavenly places with Christ Jesus--as St. Paul tells us
we may do even in this life: but to go to our own place--wherever
that may be--with selfish Judas, who when he found that his Saviour
was not about to restore the kingdom to Israel, and make a great
prince of him there and then, made the best investment he could,
under the danger which he saw at hand, by selling his Lord for thirty
pieces of silver: to remain to all time a warning to those who are
religious for self-interest's sake.

What, then, is the end and aim of true Religion? St. Paul tells us
in the text. The end and aim, he says, of hearing Christ, the end
and aim of learning the truth as it is in Jesus, is this--that we may
be renewed in the spirit of our minds, and put on the new man, which
after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. To put on
the new man; the new pattern of manhood, which is after the pattern
of the Son of man, Jesus Christ, and therefore after the pattern and
likeness of God. To be followers, that is, copiers and imitators of
God, that (so says St. Paul) is the end and aim of religion. In one
word, we are to be good; and religion, according to St. Paul, is
neither more nor less than the act of becoming good, like the good
God.

To be like God. Can we have any higher and more noble aim than that?
And yet it is a simple aim. There is nothing fantastic, fanatical,
inhuman about it. It is within our reach--within the reach of every
man and woman; within the reach of the poorest, the most unlearned.
For how does St. Paul tell us that we can become like God?